Peckham

byGary BuddenThe fourth and final image is simpler, easier to interpret. It gives Andrew more hope than the previous pictures. A solitary young girl clutching a balloon with the spriggan’s face its decoration stands smiling with genuine joy. In the background, the Olympic Park is consumed by hungry flames as tattooed looters ransack a shopping centre. [read more…]

byMatt HaynesIn the grass are, unmistakably, the ghosts of abandoned roads: cracked tarmac and kerbstones, carless and homeless, fading to brown and green. And here’s the thing: if you look in an old A-Z – one from the sixties, say – Burgess Park isn’t there. But those spectral streets are; and they have names, and purpose, and they’re drawn in hard black ink. There’s also a line of turquoise, running dead straight between them. [read more…]

byAlice BowerI didn’t know you could access the underworld from the school. It’s just not something they told me when I applied for the job. “Nice school, challenging area, good pay” – that’s what they told me. They never once used the words “passage to hell under the large apparatus in the school hall”. But then I guess that might put a lot of people off, mightn’t it? [read more…]

byMatt HaynesAcross the road, a window is piled high with what look like stacks of pillows. Grubby white letters on a green awning above it read: Victory Food Stores, Jesus is Lord, Phil.2:11. Beside the food store is a nail salon, then a jeweller’s, a florist’s, and – I stare at the words above the next doorway: Divine Money, Financial Services. Why is that so familiar? Obviously it’s the sort of name you remember, but – where would I be remembering it from? [read more…]